Claiming Credit: Antiwar Democrats Want Role in Iraq Success

It's amazing that while members of radical netroots continue to bash the administration on Iraq, claiming sectarian reconciliation will never take place, Members of Congress are increasingly bowing to the liklihood of success in the conflict.

The latest example is Congressman Paul Kanjorski, who claims Democratic war opponents are reponsible for the surge, via Jeff Emanuel:

Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA), who recently gained media attention for his videotaped admission that, due to "temptation to want to win back the Congress," Democrats "stretched the facts" regarding their ability to actually end the war in Iraq, appears to be back for a video encore. This time, the Democratic Congressman appears in a video making two distinct statements regarding the 'Surge' strategy that has been so effective in Iraq.

The video is below; below that is a transcript.

In February 2007, Kanjorski went to the floor of the House to say:

Ms. Speaker, I rise today to join the overwhelming majority of the American people, the Congress, and many top U.S. military commanders to voice my opposition to President Bush's ill-conceived plan to send more American troops into the middle of an ongoing Civil War in Iraq

Then, in an interview from just days ago, Kanjorski said:

We've taken public positions which have now forced the president to go into the surge mentality, which is somewhat working

Recently, it was his unfortunate honesty that hurt him; this time, it will be that honesty combined with a penchant for duplicitousness that will come back to haunt him.

In his first statement, Kanjorski was correct in his toeing of the Democrat line on the President's proposals for Iraq: oppose, oppose, oppose. Oppose staying the course, while simultaneously opposing changing course. Deny that any impact was being made; call the 'surge' a failure, even before the troops assigned to execute the strategy being implemented by the new commander of coalition forces there
were in place to do so.

Talk down the war's progress at all costs, and say things like this: "The war is lost. The surge has failed" (Sen. Harry Reid); The surge "is a failure" (Rep. Nancy Pelosi); "The U.S. troop buildup in Iraq has failed" (Sen. Carl Levin); The president is "desperate...to shore up support for his failed "surge" strategy" (Gov. Bill Richardson); "We should stop the surge and start bringing our troops home" (Sen. Joe Biden); "As many had forseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results" (Reid and Pelosi); "It’s clear that the current strategy – the President’s escalation – has failed" (Sen. John Kerry); and "According to...Republicans, and unfortunately even some Democrats, the President's surge in Iraq has been a resounding success. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth" (Rep. Robert Wexler).

If all else fails, attempt to implement a "slow bleed" strategy (and call it that, for maximum effect!), which will consist of a multimillion dollar anti-military, anti-war campaign combined with legislative action that will slowly but surely deprive the warfighters on the ground in Iraq of the materiél they need to prosecute the war, in hopes that, once they run so low on funding, gear, and supplies that they can no longer effectively fight, President Bush will be forced to bring them home.

At worst case, Democrats were to treat any positive results that came from Iraq as a result of President Bush and General Petraeus's new strategy there with the snide indifference that Florida Congressman Tim Mahoney did when he responded last year to the question "What if the 'surge' is successful?" with a question of his own: "So what?"

Crediting any possible progress in that country to Iran, who is busy providing insurgents with the weapon responsible for killing the most American troops of any being used in the country, was fine, as Rep. Pelosi demonstrated last week; actually crediting the 'surge' itself, though, was to be verboten.

Whoops.

Members of Congress face electoral pressures, and when Iraq's turning out to be less salient in the minds of voters, incumbents naturally want to get on the right side of the issue, especially when the "do-nothing" label can be powerfully deployed against entrenched Defeatocrats.